


A Constant

by Lacertae



Series: Soulmates [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bonding, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, Pining, Romantic Soulmates, Slow Build, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 18:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18371942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertae/pseuds/Lacertae
Summary: *Genji/Zenyatta, (past) Mondatta/Zenyatta* soulmate au, sequel to 'Loss and Gain', third in the Soulmates series. Genji never cared about soulmarks, because he doesn't have one -and when it appears, he is too empty to care. And then... and then.





	A Constant

**Author's Note:**

> I know it took me forever to write a third parter, but that ended up being because I wanted to solve everything in the third part, while that just would not work. This is what next part will be about.

**A Constant**

 

Genji’s soulmark is late to come.

At five, he watches his brother’s mark with fascination, and asks when will his own come? His brother makes fun of him, puffs his chest out and says, “you still get it after me, so _I_ win.”

At ten, he inspects his body after every time his father drags him out on a boring meeting with affiliates of the family. He fidgets at his side, frowning and trying to keep his back straight, so not to shame his family just like his father told him, and watches Hanzo and his unreadable face with envy. Whenever his father slams his hand on the table, he catches sight of his mark, golden and taking up much of the back of his hand, up to the wrist, in the shape of a lotus flower.

When he’s home, he tells Hanzo he thought their mother’s favourite flower was the hyacinth, should he ask… and Hanzo slaps the back of his head, hard, and tells him never to think about that ever again.

He is still young, and he doesn’t understand –but he thinks his brother also doesn’t understand, and he’s just acting to be better than him.

At fifteen, gangly and uncomfortable in his growing body, he starts to notice people are… nice. Pretty. Handsome. So many of them attract his attention, but more than them, it’s the marks on their bodies that catch his eye, and every night he checks, just to make sure.

There is never anything blossoming there, no grey, nor golden. Nothing.

At sixteen, Genji just gives up on it. After all, some people never do get one, skins bare until they die –he might be one of them. No big deal.

Except.

Except that Genji is a bit of a dreamer. He dreams of finding his soulmate, of experiencing a love that is almost fated, finding the one person who is meant to be with him, for him, to complete him. The two halves of a whole of all the fairy tales, of all the action movies, of all the books he reads, and the comics, and the tv-shows…

He thinks that he wants something more than settling. He’s young, and proud, and stubborn, and does not understand much about life, but he believes that he won’t be satisfied unless he has his one…

If not for the fact that it seems not to exist.

So Genji –who is young, and foolish, and never backed down from a challenge, even one self-imposed– decides that if Fate determined he was not meant to have a soulmate, then… it means no one is good enough. That he is free to pursue anyone he wants, without care, because it doesn’t matter. He won’t settle, but he can play.

There are many fish in the sea, he tells himself as he dances with girl after girl after boy after… and does not care if he leaves behind a trail of broken hearts, or if he is just trying to convince himself he doesn’t need anyone to be happy.

If he doesn’t care that he hurts others.

That pretty boy he kisses on the front porch of his house, in full view of his own brother –the boy who is not rich, nor important, nor anyone his family would wish for him– is just one of many. If his family grows angry at that, then so be it.

Genji goes to parties, concerts, raves, games that sell up to million tickets, and yet… his soulmark still won’t come. No face in the crowd becomes _that_ one.

At sixteen, still nothing.

At seventeen, eighteen, nineteen–

And then, things crumble.

Genji’s life shatters and he cracks and splinters and loses himself, scrambles with the pieces that are left, fails, and plummets deeper and deeper into despair. Thinking about having a soulmate becomes a ridiculous thought.

Perhaps destiny knew this would be his fate, perhaps this is why he’s never been allowed to have a mark. Because he was going to become a non-person, because he was going to be a monster, a weapon. Because to have a soulmate, one needs to have a soul, and Genji… Genji doesn’t feel like he has one.

***

 “You think too much about this shit,” Jesse says one night, voice rough and dismissive.

They’re bunking together for a mission, and Genji lets Jesse’s drawl wash over him without care, even as his eyes fall, once again, on the uncovered patch of skin on Jesse’s bicep where his mark is, grey on sun-kissed skin.

Jesse notices, like he does every time.

Genji stays quiet, and Jesse takes that as his cue to continue. “Just ‘cause you don’t got one means shit. It’s not like many even meet theirs, y’know? World’s big. Some die. Some just are never born. Big deal.”

He opens his mouth before he can think better of it –he wants to tell Jesse that it’s big words from someone with a mark, someone who has a person, somewhere in the world, that belongs to him, even if they’ll never meet…. Then clacks his jaw close, teeth gritted in an ugly grimace, and looks away. There’s a thinly veiled fury boiling in his veins, of just yet another thing that was ripped away from him, but…

But what does it even matter? He has no one anywhere. He’s less than a person, nothing but a weapon for Overwatch to use as they see fit. What’s left for him is just revenge, anger and betrayal.

No soulmate would ever want someone… something like him, even if he had one.

Maybe the only thing his skin should show are scars.

***

The mark appears on his skin quietly in the middle of the night, on the back of his neck, right on his nape. It blossoms grey, slowly, like it’s unsure to exist.

For a long while, no one notices, the wires attached to his head hiding it from sight, until the medic in Blackwatch mentions it offhandedly while jotting down her next health report.

Her voice is amused but dismissive, uncaring about what it means, no thought going to her own mark hidden by her long sleeves. She rarely looks at it, after all, except during long, lonely nights. It has burned golden for years now.

The rage that burns through Genji is as strong as it is righteous as he refuses to even look at it or acknowledge it, and many nights he finds his fingers seeking the patch of skin, digging into it with glee until his fingertips break skin and he bleeds.

Hide the mark, hide it from the world, hide it from his own eyes.

The person meant for him is– a baby. An infant. Born when Genji feels like he’s lived an entire, far too long life. Soulless, weapon, alone, corrupted, broken. Fate mocks him –giving him as a soulmate someone far too young. As if Genji expects to live past his thirties, used as he is by Overwatch and Blackwatch both. Weapons have an expiry date, after all, and he has almost outlived his own.

A mockery.

He misses the time he thought he would never get a mark.

And if he gets a little harsher, if he throws himself into battle with a little more fervour, as if to compensate, well…

It doesn’t even matter.

***

There is no sudden burst of light that makes Genji aware of his feelings for Zenyatta –though sometimes, in his thoughts, Genji jokes that it must have been the Iris lighting up Zenyatta’s body like a lamp, that finally had him make the connection.

It is a slow process, like a gentle slope that barely tilts downwards, yet Genji cannot stop himself, and once he is aware of it, he does not want to.

Zenyatta does not explode in his life like a supernova, he does not impose himself in Genji’s narrow, pained life until everything changes, but he is a constant, kind presence, and with him, Genji does change for the better.

And with this change, emotions and feelings Genji had thought he would never feel resurface like tiny saplings in the spring, peeking from layers of cold snow, and Zenyatta is… his sun.

Genji is in love, and like that, he realises that the mark that meant so much to him for so long, even during that stretch of his life where it seemed it did not, now truly is meaningless. His thoughts not focused on a hypothetical, mythical soulmate who lives somewhere in the world, far away, too young, too foreign, too distant…

No –they are glued to the kind, gentle soul of the omnic monk that saved his life, and guided him back to the path of the living.

Genji knows, has known for a long time, that his heart belongs to Zenyatta.

Since the moment they met, even if he was not aware of it, then. Since the first time Zenyatta’s laughter made Genji fumble with himself, in awe at its sound. Since the first time Zenyatta made _him_ laugh, as he’d forgotten how it felt to be happy.

How foolish young Genji had been –thinking that longing for a person different from your soulmate would be like settling for second best.

Now he knows better.

It is bittersweet –Zenyatta has no soulmark. Genji has asked once, still halfway to freedom, bitterness lacing his voice, and had learned a lesson even then.

He is not half of someone else, not forced by fate to love someone simply because of a mark on his skin. Whether he chooses to be with someone or not, it is his choice, and nobody else’s, his feelings for someone are true, and real, and not something flimsy.

Genji is _whole_.

And… and…

And Genji is elated, because it means he can hope –he can hope that if Zenyatta truly believes this, then maybe he would not mind Genji’s feelings for him, strong as they are.

He can hope, deep in his mind, that Zenyatta might even return them…

Except, he knows, it is not meant to be.

The longing he feels, at time so crushing yet sweet, is hopeless, but Genji has grown from his younger days, and feels no bitterness, and even that thought is surprising.

Zenyatta, the omnic he loves, longs for someone else as much as Genji does for him, and day after day Genji watches Zenyatta attempt to reach out, only to fail.

Mondatta is more than just an omnic, more than just a person –more than the soul Zenyatta loves. He is a leader, a symbol, crushed by responsibilities he took for himself that no one else could shoulder. He loves Zenyatta more than any other, yet he seems untouched by the love Zenyatta offers him.

Foolishly, Genji thought that Zenyatta would one day bridge the ever-growing gap and finally have the happiness he deserved, by being by Mondatta’s side as his equal, and that together they would change the world.

And then Mondatta _dies_.

Genji has never felt more mortal than in the moment he sees Mondatta’s body fall to the ground, unmoving, from the safe distance of thousands of miles.

He’s never felt so afraid of death as he does then.

And the fallout is…

Zenyatta crashes and burns, his despair so thick it becomes tangible, wrapping around him like poison, eating him from the inside, and Genji is there to see it, and he feels… there is anger, there, at Mondatta, for leaving Zenyatta behind, for leaving Genji alone to deal with this, there is pain, because he loved Mondatta as well, there is suffocating fear, because what if Zenyatta–

Through all of this, Genji never leaves his side, and slowly, slowly… Zenyatta recovers.

He smiles at Genji again. He meditates, and reaches for the Iris to find Harmony, not just Discord.

Zenyatta starts to live again, and Genji can breathe easily, and yet…

The world is not the same, without Mondatta in it.

Mondatta is _dead_ , and out of reach, and Genji knows that a part of Zenyatta’s heart has died with him, and he is ashamed of how angry the thought makes him –that Mondatta dared to die, taking part of Zenyatta’s happiness with him, and Genji still wishes for him to love him back.

He cannot, he _won’t_ take his place, but he can’t lie to himself about his own feelings.

Lost, Genji wraps himself in this love, and realises that though angry, he is not bitter for this further loss of hope.

He cannot deny Zenyatta his love, he cannot deny the depth of his emotions, and Genji is simply angry because he’s hurting.

So greedy, to wish for more.

He is whole, he has a soul, he feels human again, he can live on his own, and yet… he still has something he can’t have, right in front of him, and the thought _hurts_.

Zenyatta is closer to him than to any other _living_ being…

And that is the problem.

There was someone else, and that one is not Genji, and never will be.

He has made peace with that a long time ago.

***

Something has happened.

Zenyatta is quiet, too quiet. He walks more slowly, like his thoughts are lost somewhere, and Genji’s eyes, sharp as they are when Zenyatta’s involved, notice he’s always holding a small piece of paper.

He cannot see what is on it, as Zenyatta’s hands wrap around it almost self-consciously, protectively, but every now and then, Zenyatta’s grip allows for him to take a small, tentative glance, and then his shoulders drop, like something heavy has been placed upon them.

Yet, despite Genji’s quiet questions, Zenyatta does not indulge in his offer for a listening ear; not quite flustered but moved enough that he nods at him, Zenyatta refuses to share what hails him, leaving Genji to worry, and wonder.

It started after Zenyatta’s visit to Brigitte, but Genji knows she could not have said anything to truly perturb him this way, and yet…

Thoughts linger. They take hold, dusting Genji’s soul with worry –the last time Zenyatta had felt this distant he’d been at King’s Row, upon taking notice of the statue they’d built in Mondatta’s memory. Had Brigitte mentioned something about him?

For a moment, Genji wonders if he should ask her –if he knew more then maybe he could help… but the thought of infringing on Zenyatta’s privacy is like a discordant echo in the back of his mind.

He cares too much for him to risk hurting him more.

He watches as Zenyatta walks through the corridors of the base, watches as others give him uncertain, worried gazes.

He watches Brigitte peek from the open door of her work rooms, biting down on her lower lip so hard it looks like it’ll bleed soon, knuckles white where she holds onto the door before she retires, burying herself in her work.

He watches Lena, her body a vibrating mess, wanting to reach out but not knowing how, tugging Zenyatta out of his funk with cheerful words and managing to help, if only for a bit, though she knows it’s only for a moment.

He watches the others and notices how dear Zenyatta is to all of them, and they cast glances at him in askance as well, wondering why Genji is not helping, but… until Zenyatta is ready, Genji will not be able to do anything.

Be by his side, and wait.

 


End file.
